Embers
by Boriscat42
Summary: Glorfindel comforts Elrond after Celebrian sails for Valinor , and they end up discussing his relationship with Ecthelion and the fall of Gondolin. Glorfindel/Ecthelion.


The fire sputtered down to coals, nearly erasing the dark silhouettes of Elrond and Glorfindel against the great hearth. A few wisps of ash drifted out into the dark hall and caught in the men's hair. They sat in a quiet reverie, both staring into the fire and yet unaware of its existence.

The Hall of Fire had been empty for three days, aside from Elrond. He had mourned Celebrian's departure alone; few dared to approach him as he grieved. Glorfindel had come this evening to ask Elrond's opinion on a mundane matter of patrols and border security, but the pain in the lord's eyes warned him into silence. Still, he stayed beside the dying fire, hoping that his presence might be some small comfort to the bereaved.

Elrond broke the silence, startling Glorfindel. "What happens now? Do I forsake my people and sail west in her wake? If there is light left in Arda, my eyes are too clouded to see it."

Glorfindel studied Elrond's eyes for a moment before answering. "Remember your purpose here. You are not parted from her in vain, nor permanently."

"I do not believe that my hatred for Sauron is strong enough to replace Celebrian in my heart."

"Not to replace her, but to sustain you until you may be reunited. Trust in the Valar that your reunion will be sweetened by the trials of waiting."

Elrond was disconcerted by Glorfindel's words, which seemed founded in grim experience. "You have experienced such loss before, Glorfindel?"

"Yes. But do not let me burden you with my ancient grief, not when yours is so fresh."

"No. Tell me. Maybe I can forget my own tears for a while. What was her name?"

Glorfindel chuckled dryly. "Not hers. His."

"His?"

"Yes, Elrond, his. Women have never interested me, beautiful creatures though they are. I thought you knew that."

"I never particularly considered it. When I have thought of your life before… coming here, I have only really considered your heroics. Silly of me, I know. His name, then."

"Ecthelion, lord of the House of the Fountain."

Elrond let out a little gasp. "Gorthmog's bane?"

Another chuckle from Glorfindel. "The same. He would have been bemused to hear his name used as a battle cry."

"As was yours, before your return embarrassed the ranks into switching back to Elbereth."

Glorfindel shifted self consciously in his seat and plunged into his story. "Ecthelion and I were friends for many centuries before we realized we loved each other. We met on the Ice, in Turgon's company. He was an orphan: his mother was of the Teleri, and his father, a high lord of the Noldor, was killed early on by a shifting ice flow. The Kinslaying had deeply depressed him. It took his mother and most of his close family. When I first saw him, he was nearly fading.

"I, too, was alone. My mother and father were close in friendship with the Vanyar, and they stayed in Tirion. We were somehow related to a high house of that clan, through my mother's family. I only made the crossing out of youthful wanderlust. Needless to say, I was not disappointed in my quest for adventure, though when I tasted it, I did not savor it as I once thought I would."

Here Glorfindel paused, glancing at Elrond to ensure that he was still interested in the tale. The latter nodded his approval. "That explains your yellow hair. I always wondered at your ancestry because of it. But tell me more of your time on the Ice with Ecthelion."

"As I said before, he was nearly fading, and shaking from the cold besides. He was thin and pale. Turgon had already taken me under his wing as a lieutenant, and fed me and equipped me, so I was in a better state than poor Ecthelion. I began walking with him, trying to coax him into conversation, though it was difficult to break through his gloomy shell. Finally he did speak, and told me of his losses. We slept together at night for warmth, and as the days went on, he cheered up somewhat. The other trials of the crossing helped him forget his grief.

"Soon enough, I discovered his sense of humor. Ecthelion was wicked. He was so quiet and polite most of the time that his jokes took you by surprise. He could wield his sharp tongue with a straight face. He always goaded me about my name, that my parents named me after my hair because they knew it would be my only worthy feature. I nearly strangled him the first time, and he saw me angry and just fell to pieces laughing.

"Looking back, if I had to mark the moment when I fell in love, I would say my cause was hopeless from the first moment I heard him laugh. Think of the deep roll of waves on a rocky shore mixed with the trills of wind chimes, and you will have a rough approximation. I did not hear him sing until we reached firm land. By then, he had regained his strength; like me, he became one of Turgon's captains. We all began to sing when we stepped onto the shore; some epic or drinking song, I truly do not remember, but it was joyful. And Ecthelion's voice…."

Glorfindel trailed off with a distant expression. Elrond prompted him again, this time with no waver or sob in his words: "I have heard of Ecthelion's musical prowess before; many say that his was the finest voice ever found among the Noldor."

"That is understatement. He could shake the rafters of a hall or the branches above his head on a crescendo, and his quiet phrases seemed to speak to the heart of every listener individually. His voice and his flute, echoing through the cavernous chambers of Vinyamar… it was an otherworldly sound. But Ecthelion was always shy of it; in his ears, his voice must have been distorted and grating because I nearly had to fall at his feet and beg before he would perform in public.

"While in Vinyamar, our lord Turgon became rather busy: maintaining neutrality in the quarrels of the sons of Feanor demanded the majority of his time. Therefore, he divided his armies in two, giving Ecthelion and me each command of a half. We frequently cooperated in training our officers and we sparred on the practice grounds together. We were evenly matched. He was a few inches taller than I, but more slender, so though his longer arms allowed his sword a greater range, my stronger blows compensated. Our matches were fiercely competitive, and our men took bets on us. One slip of a foot or a distracted glance could decide the outcome.

"Though I hated to admit it, Ecthelion himself was my greatest distraction. I tried so hard to concentrate only on Orcrist's flashing blade, but I could not help myself. We sparred bare-chested—it was good policy, to lower the number of uniforms to be washed each day—but the rippling of his muscles and the blue flames in his eyes as we fought drew my eye away from his weaponry. I could not have been the only person guilty of that fault. Ecthelion was glorious, while fighting or otherwise, but he considered himself plain, and carried himself accordingly. His hair was so black that it shone blue, and it fell nearly to his waist, but he insisted upon braiding it tightly down his back. While we walked through Vinyamar or Gondolin together, we attracted many an admiring gaze. We had several long arguments over who drew this attention; he always claimed that onlookers were interested in me alone."

Elrond snorted. "A pretty pair you must have been."

Glorfindel ignored him. "We built our houses near to each other in Gondolin. As in Vinyamar, our soldiers trained together, and a close alliance was formed between the Fountain and the Flower. But it was the Nirnaeth Arnoediad that finally brought us together. Through the entire battle, I worried that Ecthelion would be killed. He must have worried the same for me, for when we returned to the city, he cornered me in the armory, pinned me against a wall, and kissed me until I saw stars. Then his courage finally failed him, his battle fury drained away, and he backed away from me, trembling and horrified at his forwardness. He must have expected me to draw my sword on him and cut him down where he stood."

"And you did not?"

"Of course not. I spun him around and pressed _him_ against the wall and kissed him again. I will never forget the astonished expression on his face and the way his voice shook when he whispered 'I love you'… Of course, within a week, it had become a game, to try to kiss each other unconscious. Neither of us ever succeeded, but we came close, and it was a great comfort in the grim days following the Nirnaeth, when every man in Gondolin was mourning a friend or brother. It is heartbreaking to send your soldiers into battle, knowing the name of each, and the names of their wives, and husbands, and children, but also knowing that many will die. Ecthelion and I mourned the passing of several hundred soldiers apiece, and I believe that alone, either of us might have faded."

Glorfindel suddenly realized what he was saying, and seemed to come out of a trance. "I am so sorry, Elrond! This is no way to cheer you up. I shall tell you of your father's childhood instead."

"No, tell me more about Ecthelion. Is this the first you have spoken of him since your return?"

"Yes. I suppose I have never found occasion to, before now. It is too sad a story to burden others with."

"All the more reason to discuss it. You will poison yourself with sorrow gone rancid if you let it alone too long. You must continue. Please."

A sad smile twisted Glorfindel's mouth. "If you wish. Time heals all wounds, as they say, and life in Gondolin slowly returned to normal. We enjoyed three peaceful decades. Formal courtship and marriage is a slow process among the Noldor, as you well know, but Ecthelion and I began to plan. First, we had to dissuade Turgon from his plot to marry one or the other of us to Idril Celebrindal."

Elrond actually laughed. "You two must have been the only eligible men in Gondolin ever to refuse her!"

"Quite possibly. She fawned on Ecthelion, before she met Tuor of course, and I remember being quite jealous until I realized that he had no interest in her. Later, he teased me about it, claiming that he had only allowed himself to be betrothed to me in order to ward off her advances. He named her the most annoying woman in Gondolin."

"So it was widely known that you were courting?"

"Of course! Our lieutenants enjoyed it greatly. They made it their lives' purpose to lock us in closets together during company beer nights. Turgon, meanwhile, set about planning our wedding in minute detail. He debated the comparative merits of white and silver tablecloths for days."

"Did he ever decide?"

"He never had the chance. The tablecloths in question were all burned black."

"Really? How did that come to pass?"

"Gondolin fell."

The crackling of the coals in the hearth became the loudest sound in the room. Elrond watched Glorfindel's face crumble as if the inevitable end to his story had taken him by surprise. Timidly, Elrond addressed him again: "I will not ask you to speak of… it… if you do not wish to."

"No, you are probably right. Better for me to speak of it now than to dream of it tonight. We celebrated the Gates of Summer, sitting silently upon the city walls. Ecthelion had been placed in charge of the choirs, as he was every year, and it was he who would break the silence with his irresistible voice. But the sun seemed to rise in the north, not the east, and riders came fleeing into the city to warn us of the approaching hoards of Morgoth, and for the first time in centuries, the nocturnal silence was broken not by joyful song, but by shouts of fear and pain.

"Still in our ridiculous ceremonial armor, we rushed to rally our houses. Hurried war councils were taken. The cowardice of Salgant in leading his men delayed my house, too, and great damage had already been done to Ecthelion's troops by the time we arrived at the front. I saw Ecthelion himself, fey and terrible in his rage, and the smoldering corpses of the balrogs he had already dispatched. I wished to run to him, to protect him from the onslaught, but my duty lay elsewhere. The line of the Gondolindrim was already breaking in the face of the attack, and Salgant's eternally condemnable hesitation and absence left us with no choice but to protect the flanks as we retreated.

"As I hewed through the seas of orcs who assaulted me, I watched Ecthelion's last stand at the great fountain, watched him stand apart from the failing lines with his flimsy, jewel-encrusted parade armor glittering red in reflection of Gorthmog's flames, watched his hair catch and burn as he struggled, one arm already limp and mangled. You have heard the songs of my own desperate stand; that was an act of cowardice, in comparison with the courage I mustered in that moment to prevent myself from saving him. I could have. I could have thrown myself in front of him and extinguished Gorthmog's flames with my own sword. And oh, how I longed to protect him and hold him in my arms again before the end. But had I done so, we would have both fallen to the waves of demons that were rising up to relieve Gorthmog, and both my forces and his would have fallen to disarray with no captain to lead them. I knew I must restrain myself: my duty and my honor required that I organize the remaining troops to defend Tuor's retreat from the city. My duty and my honor required that I leave the man I loved to die alone.

"So I watched impotently as his other arm was hewn off. I was a powerless spectator as Orcrist clattered to the ground beside the fountain, and Ecthelion drove his spiked helm into Gorthmog's chest, and his entire body went up in flame, and suddenly all was steam, and somehow his death gave me courage. I guarded the rear as we escaped by a secret way from the city, and I guarded without fear.

"My own death was a relief. It was a fortuitous coincidence that attacking a balrog was conducive to protecting our refugees, and for the first time during that battle, my conscience allowed me to fight a worthy foe. I felt as if I were avenging Ecthelion's fall, senseless though that was, for in dying he had avenged his own death. The flames did not seem to burn me; the whip did not cut, though I saw my blood speckle the rocks under my boots. I shifted my weight slightly, and suddenly we were flying, my balrog and I. Floating was the last sensation I knew, and everything went black.

"You have already heard the rest of my history. I was sent back from the Halls of Mandos to protect you and your kin. I still look twice at every dark-haired elf that passes through the gates of Imladris, hoping that Ecthelion has returned to me. Sometimes, when you or Erestor have your backs toward me, I imagine that you are Ecthelion, but Erestor is not quite tall enough, and your hair is too light."

Glorfindel finally paused, looking to Elrond for his reaction to the history. Elrond attempted to speak again, and his voice cracked as if from disuse. "I am sure that he has been reborn. He is waiting for you in Valinor, with Celebrian, and some day we will cross the sea, and our ship will pull into harbor, and they will be standing there…"

"Maybe. But I trust that he will return to me, somehow, somewhere. Iluvitar will find us standing together, hand in hand, when the world is changed, and we will walk together out of Arda."

"Beside me and Celebrian."

"Yes. Beside you and Celebrian."

**I have a confession to make... this is my first story! I didn't want to say that at the beginning for fear of scaring readers off, but if anybody has any opinions for me, I'd sell my soul for some constructive criticism :)**


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